Has The Stag Stopped Screaming?
by NightComesSwiftly
Summary: - Diana, goddess of the hunt, is close friends with Actaeon until the night he attempts to force himself upon her. She transforms him into a stag, and her own hounds tear him to pieces.- A series of murders involving in archer arise near Will Graham's home in Wolf Trap Virginia, putting him into a dangerous situation.
1. Prologue: Diana and Actaeon

Prologue: Diana and Actaeon 

_Many variations of this particular myth exist, the most popular of which portrays the hunter, Actaeon, as an unfortunate hunter who stumbles upon the goddess bathing one night and is dumbstruck by her beauty. Diana, outraged, flings water from her bathing pool upon him, transforming him into a stag and robbing him of his ability to speak. No longer recognizing their master, Actaeon's own hounds attack him. _

_The myth is meant to remind mortals of the cruelty of the gods, illustrating, in particular, Diana's own mercilessness. _

_However, many other versions of this myth exist. In some, Diana and Actaeon were close companions. Sometimes the hounds are Diana's. _

_Sometimes Actaeon is not so innocent._

* * *

This is the story that Will Graham sees as it washes over his burning mind. He is sitting, shivering, on the bathroom floor. He is not wearing any clothes, and blood is mixing with the water that drenches his body.

In his mind he is somewhere else; he is in a forest.

* * *

_ Actaeon was once a great hunter and a trusted companion of the dark-haired and solitary goddess, Diana. _

_One night Diana went to bathe in a dark and sacred pool deep in the forest, guarded by her hounds and by the chill light of the moon above her. Actaeon crept silently into the clearing, his mind full of wickedness. He attempted to force himself on the goddess, whom he had been lusting after since the beginning. Diana dipped her hand into the water of the sacred spring and flung the drops upon Actaeon. _

_His face lengthened, his eyes went dark, and antlers began to sprout from his skull. Diana had transformed him into a stag. _

_Diana's hounds, no longer recognizing their master's companion, as he had become a beast, fell upon him and tore him to pieces._

* * *

Will Graham is still shivering. He has the kind of cold that cannot be easily broken, the kind of cold that will stay with him for quite some time. He knows where he is; he knows how he got there, but does wonder _why_.

He wonders why the dogs have not stopped barking.

He wonders why the stag has not stopped screaming. It must be unconscious by now, if not dead, but he can hear sharp and clear inside his skull.

Perhaps it is only an echo.


	2. Chapter One: Cruel Diana

Chapter One: Cruel Diana 

(Three-and-a-half weeks earlier)

_I am in the woods of Lake Ridge Park, Prince William County, Virginia. The time is 2:33 in the afternoon. _

_My victim is a white male in his late forties. He is overweight, not grossly so, but enough to give him a substantial roll around his waist. His time of death is somewhere between midnight and one o' clock last night. I gave him the drug to make him sleep, but I couldn't predict exactly when he was going to wake up. _

_A pair of hikers, husband and wife, left their trail at around ten thirty this morning. They are newly married, looking for any chance to be alone together. The excitement will leave their marriage within the year. They stumbled on the body a mere hundred feet from the trail; it's a miracle the smell hadn't alerted anyone else by then. _

_The body is already rigid and blue due to rigor mortis, but the frigid November wind has stiffened it to an even greater extent, preserving it. _

_The body is naked, eyes open, expression blank. Its cheek is pushed against the dirt, forcing its lips to open and exposing a thin line of teeth. A single arrow protrudes from the corpse's back, saluting like a flagpole from its place between its ribs. The head of it has torn a lung and buried itself fully in the man's heart. _

_The pendulum swings once, twice, three times. _

_Beverly Katz vanishes from her squatting position beside the body. The other members of the forensic team follow suit. Then it's the police's turn. The yellow tape around the clearing is a formality; the park has been closed to prevent more hikers from stumbling across the scene, but it too is swept away in one swing of the pendulum. _

_The freeze-dried blood on and around my victim's body retracts back into him, becoming warm again and flowing out towards the veins in his extremities. _

_I walk backwards, my eyes still ahead. Ten yards, twenty, fifty, one hundred, one hundred and ten. He can only run so far given his weight and the mild heart condition he will die not knowing he had. I crouch down behind a set of bushes. The sun has been wiped from the sky, rolled away by the austere blackness of night. The moon is a bright sliver in the sky, providing all the light I need. _

_Martin Bishop awakes, naked, freezing. The temperature drops as low as fourteen degrees. He is recovering from the drug I administered less than two hours ago, although, having regained consciousness, he is in a much better condition than he was. He does not know where his clothes are; he does not know where he is. He will die lost, confused, wondering what has happened to him and why. _

_This is my design. _

_I fire my first arrow at his feet. It scrapes his left heel and drives into the dirt. This is not a miss; the arrow lands exactly where I want it. I tell him to run, and he is glad to oblige. As the large, pasty target that is his body crashes through the branches, I walk towards the arrow and retrieve it. I am giving Mr. Bishop a head start. This is not generous of me; I do this to all of my victims. After all, without the thrill of the chase, the joy of the hunt, what's the point? _

_This is my design. _

_Now I begin to run. I am much, much swifter than Mr. Bishop, but his fear gives him speed. Unfortunately for Mr. Bishop, it is not enough. I release my second arrow of the night as Mr. Bishop bursts into a small clearing, the light of the barely-there moon striking his back. The arrow pierces the skin below his left armpit, driving deep between his ribs. He falls forward, face hitting the dirt and crumpling like a pillow, one hundred and ten yards from where he woke. _

"Will, talk to me."

Will Graham is rudely jolted from his reverie by Jack Crawford, who claps him solidly on the shoulder with a broad hand. The profiler draws a rattling breath and wipes his glasses hurriedly.

"We're looking for a woman, late forties, Caucasian – serial killers tend to hunt within their own ethnic groups…" He coughs, rubbing his hands together. Even in the afternoon the park is still deathly cold. A detective squeezes between two police cars and hands Jack a pair of coffees. He offers one to Will, who accepts it gratefully. Jack thanks the detective, who Will has never seen before. "She's very athletic, most likely attractive. I'd put her somewhere between 5'8 and 5'10."

Jack blows on his coffee, regarding Will with a weathered and a furrowed brow. He dismisses the young detective with a nod.

"Who's the new recruit?" Will asks, sipping his coffee with a grimace.

"Officer Tracy Hicks, she's just been reassigned."

Will follows the austere man in a slow circle around the body, watching as he stares concernedly downwards.

"Is there a reason I'm just hearing about this killer now?"

"The three previous victims were all found in different national parks, they took it up with the government. They just turned it over to us now."

"Why?"

Beverly Katz has overheard their conversation and replies to Will's inquiry before Jack has a chance to.

"She's never left an arrow before." As if to punctuate the statement, she tugs the offending object smoothly out from between the victim's ribs. "The local police thought the others were _stabbings_." She turns around with a scoff, raising the bloody arrow beside her smirk.

"It's a nice arrow," Will observes.

"Do you know much about archery?" Jack asks, taking a long sip from the cup in his hand.

"No," Will replies with a shaky laugh, "it's too much like shooting a gun; I never got into it." He rubs his arm with his free hand, gulping down the coffee. He blinks, a dull ache in his head making him wish that he had a Bufferin tablet to go with it. "But," he continues, "The arrow is obviously of fine make. She's very passionate about her work."

Beverly regards the arrow, weighing it in her gloved hand. "It's heavy," she observes.

"So she finds her victims in bars, drugs their drinks," Jack begins, "drives them to a secluded place and hunts them down. Why? What's the point of all the elaboration?"

"It isn't about the murder," Will explains, his jaw twitching, "The whole point is the hunt, the chase."

"So how's she choosing the victims?"

"All are men, late forties, indicating that she is too. They're married…" He blinks, seeing the connection in full. "She seduces them, in the bars I mean, to see if they take the bait. The victims are all serial cheaters."

"So her husband cheated on her, and now she's taking it out on other sleazebags like him?" Beverly says, summing it up plainly.

"It's also about humiliation," Will elaborates, tilting his head to get a better view of the victim. "She could take them to some secluded forest, but she chooses parks, places with hikers. She wants them to be found so their failings can be made known."

He squints. Jack and Beverly exchange a glance.

"I hunted you like the animal you were," Will whispers softly, letting his gaze linger on the man's dead eyes for a few seconds longer. "She doesn't take trophies, it's only ever about the hunt itself, not the result."

"Why didn't she take the arrow with her this time?" Beverly asks after a moment, "She's never left it behind before."

"She loves her arrows," Will says, "she would never leave one behind voluntarily. Someone spooked her, and she ran."

"Which means," Jack points out, "that we have a possible witness."

Will nods, but his eyelids twitch painfully. The ache in his head is even stronger than before.


	3. Chapter Two: When Actaeon Was Charming

Chapter Two: When Actaeon Was Charming 

"How did you know that it was a woman?" Dr. Hannibal Lecter asks, the tones of his voice smooth and sibilant.

Will Graham does not look at him as he considers the question; the calculated alignment of his spectacles prevent any possibility of eye contact. Hannibal knows that this is a purposeful habit, he deduced it the moment they met, but his hands itch with irritation nonetheless. If he could, he would reach out and lift the profiler's glasses right off of the bridge of his nose.

But that would be rude, not to mention impossible considering the distance between their chairs.

Will takes a breath. He has a peculiar habit of baring his teeth when he does so, like a forced facsimile of a smile.

"The whole scene had a distinctly _feminine_ air to it, the male humiliation, the motif of the hunting in the forest – out there under the moon…"

"All distinct feminist power symbols," Hannibal finishes for him, and then he watches Will nods haltingly. The brown-haired man shifts in his chair for perhaps the tenth time. It's another habit that Dr. Lecter has observed, one that is slightly more irksome than the profiler's strategically placed glasses. The psychiatrist himself sits stoically, his legs crossed, muscles barely moving. "It calls to mind the virgin priestesses of old, running wild through the forest in the dead of night. Do you think our killer is a sorceress?" It is almost a joke, and the doctor's lips tug upwards.

"She may believe herself to be," Will swallows with a frown, reconsidering, "Or she may think herself a goddess."

"Pagan goddesses were known for their cruelty," Hannibal replies, "they enacted their revenge on mortals who had wronged them without just cause or mercy. This killer may believe she is acting through divine right."

The man across from him laughs nervously. "What ever happened to the all-loving God?" He says with his smile like a grimace.

"Diana came first," Hannibal responds without missing a beat, "and Juno, and Mars. Once gods were forged in human image, not anymore. The concept of a faultless god is as newborn as Christianity."

"Are you religious, Doctor Lecter?" Will asks. He over enunciates his consonants, straining each one as if they were blades to be bitten.

"I simply have an informed knowledge of classical art and literature. I find it hard to believe in a power higher than that of the human mind."

_(A translation: "I find it hard to believe in a power higher than my own.") _

He leans forward; resting his forearms on his knees, and continues. "We each have the ability to control our own destiny."

The profiler in the opposite chair glances upwards to acknowledge the statement, and their eyes meet. This is purely accidental on Will's part, and he quickly looks at the carpet, blushing, but Hannibal does not move an inch. He has heard theory that eye contact lasting longer than six seconds betrays either an extreme sexual attraction – or a murderous intent.

Hannibal thinks to himself that, should he ever be presented with the impossible opportunity to gaze into Will Graham's beautiful eyes, he would not be able to identify which desire he would find himself feeling.

After all, the two sensations have always felt very, very similar to him.

"Are these chairs closer together than the last time I was here?" Will asks suddenly, breaking the silence.

"I just cleaned," the psychiatrist replies, leaning back in his chair once more. "Do _you_ have any interest in religion, Will?"

The bespectacled man laughs his shaky, nervous laugh. "Pray never really worked for me," he says, "plenty of god-fearing individuals have not escaped murder because of their faith."

"Is god a psychopath?" Hannibal asks with a shadow of a grin.

"Oh, he's a narcissist, to be sure."

"The gods of the Greek and Norse pantheons would suit you, Will," Hannibal suggests, "They make no pretenses."

Will looks up at Hannibal, his head cocked. This time it is voluntary.

One second, two, three…


	4. Chapter Three: Midnight

Will Graham is dreaming.

As always, the images that fill his head are dark and rushing, and the thought is present in the back of his mind that they may even be real. In Wolf Trap, Virginia, where he sleeps, safe and sound, mere miles away from the forests where men have been shot to death without mercy, the sun has only hours to wait before rising.

In Will's dream, however, it is still midnight.

Dream or nightmare? It seems pleasant enough now; his body is motionless in the sheets, but inside his head winds are gusting about in the darkness, and they are what breathe his dreams into existence.

_He is back in the forest. _

_It is the same forest, this he knows. If he walked forward one hundred and ten yards he is sure to find a body, pale white under the moonlight, eyes blacker than the death buried in its heart. _

_But something feels wrong – the trees and the wind are not as they seem, not as they should be. Perhaps the moon has shifted its position in the night sky, for it seems the leaves here are illuminated differently than before and are colder and sharper in their angles. The breezes blow in all the wrong directions, the animals refuse to chatter, and all is silent. _

_Will watches, detached, as a woman glides silently through the forest around him. _

_She seems to be made of pure moonlight, her skin the color of early winter snow, her raven-black hair tied down beneath a circlet of silver. She goes barefoot and wears a white nightgown. The garment is much like the one Elise Nichols was wearing when Will found her, pale and dead, in her bedroom. _

_He is deciding whether the woman looks more like Alana Bloom or Abigail Hobbs, when she brushes past him. Her soft hair flies out behind her, floating above the quiver strapped tightly on her back. _

_She does not acknowledge his presence; it is like he is not even there. _

_(Now she reminds Will more of Alana.) _

_A pack of hounds follow close on her heels, all as sleek and swift as their master, all as adoring and silent as the silent specter, which stands beside and watches._

_ The woman bursts into a clearing, and she finally slows her pace. Will follows, anxious, peeking out from between the trees. _

_There is a spring in the forest, out there in the clearing. It is smooth and dark, several yards in diameter. The woman bends down on the shore and thrusts two snow-white fingers through its surface, rupturing the fingernail moon reflected there. They come away crimson, dripping with thick blood. The woman smiles softly and raises them to her lips. _

_When she has licked them clean, she stands once more at full height and begins to remove her gown. It is as white as her skin, and Will barely notices when it falls away. The woman still does not remove her circlet. _

_Will feels it then, a brush of air, a huff of breath. There is something moving in the forest behind him. _

_The snow-white woman feels it too, and she turns to face the trees with an expression of beautiful terror. _

_No sooner can she scream then the ravenstag slips into the clearing, moving quicker than a thought, its head pointed downwards. Its antlers catch the woman below the ribs, piercing her naked abdomen with one, furious thrust. The stag's momentum carries it forward, plunging them both into the crimson pool. _

_Will watches as they disappear below the surface, the woman thrashing and dying (and now looking more like Abigail Hobbs than ever before), the stag's feathers bristling, and he wonders just how deep the spring goes. _

Will Graham jolts out of his dream, sweat dripping down his face as he gasps for air. The sheets are damp, and the profiler is shivering with deep cold. The curtains in his room are drawn, but he can see all the sun that is slipping inside.

It is no longer midnight – now it is morning.


	5. Chapter Four: The Arrow of Gold

Beverly Katz does not pay any attention to the body on the table. She can let Price and Zeller pick it apart all they want, she's seen a hundred like it before, pasty and unassuming, not nearly as interesting as the forces that put it there. _That, _Beverly thinks, is what she's never seen before, this arrow is like nothing she has ever held.

Unlike Will Graham and Jack Crawford, she knows something of the sport of archery. It was only a passing interest as a teenager, but just obsessive enough for her to recognize that this is far more than a 'nice' arrow. It isn't made of carbon, instead the shaft between her fingers is lovingly varnished wood. It is not just of fine make, whoever owned it loved it to death. They must be devastated by its loss.

The fletchings are sleek and dark green in color, the head sharper than a thought. Both are ruffled by use and blood.

Only one company in the country dispenses arrows such as these, and only two stores in Virginia currently have them readily available.

This, Beverly thinks, is the price of luxury for a serial killer. Rarity makes for a narrow search and a subsequent capture.

This mistake, she believes, is what will ultimately lead her to the Chesapeake Ripper, with all of his elaborate displays and his finery. When everything is so specific, the pool becomes narrower and narrower, until only one name can emerge.

Beverly runs her latex-gloved fingers over the delicate fletchings and murmurs to herself, just like she always does, a self-satisfied,

"Gotcha."

* * *

As the FBI trainee, Tracy Hicks, hands him his coffee, Will asks impulsively,

"Do you know anything about archery?"

"Hmm?" The new recruit glances up at him briefly and then ducks her head, blushing. "Quite a lot actually." As she replies, she tucks a flyaway strand of hair behind her ear. It is dark brown, each strand clearly defined against the next, and her eyes are close to the same shade. She has a milquetoasted demeanor, timid and shy, her skin a wind-chaffed pale.

Will thinks, somewhat disturbingly, that she fits the profile of a Minnesota Shrike victim to a T, a veritable poster-child for the deceased Garret Jacob Hobbs. She looks a bit like the woman in his dream, but than again, so does Alana Bloom, Abigail Hobbs, and half the female population of Virginia.

"They say my mom could have gone all the way to the Olympics," Tracy continues, "but she had my sister and, well." She shrugs, and Will hesitantly sips his coffee. "But my whole family shoots, I think I first held a bow when I was three," she chuckles at the memory, and Will thinks that her dark eyes go warm and bright. "I'm about as good now as I was then, but, well…" She trails off, lips pursed.

"Our killer knows a lot about archery too," Will interjects dumbly, and he gestures about them with a shaky smile.

Tracy clears her throat and glances at the floor. Will bites his lip, mentally kicking himself. He takes a swift gulp of his coffee to disguise his embarrassment, scalding both his tongue and throat.

They are standing in the middle of the lab, with Price and Zeller arguing to their left, and Beverly Katz actually getting work done on their right. She briefed Will on her findings so far whilst Tracy was fetching coffee, now they only await the arrival of Jack Crawford and his announcement of their next move.

This killer reminds Will of the Copycat, a huntress to be sure, but she sees her victims as pigs, making a point not to honor them, stripping them naked and leaving them to rot. He looks at the body of Martin Bishop with a critical eye.

_(A Suggestion: Could it be they are not looking for a Diana, but a Circe? After all, it was she, descendant of the sun, who found the animals deep within men and made them flesh. Both pigs and lions sprung up beneath her hands depending on men's nature._

_If she looked deep inside Hannibal Lecter's heart, deeper than any well of blood in a dream can go, would she find the noble stag or would she discover instead the sly fox, its eyes sharp and dark, muzzle wet with blood? _

_Would she see the kind and gentle friend to man behind Will Graham's eyes, or would she find something much darker indeed?_

_Might she see a wolf?)_

"Are you close with your sister?" Will asks, attempting to salvage to conversation. He could do without another woman calling him insane – another Freddy Lounds.

"Oh, yes," Tracy replies, smiling quickly. "She was almost twenty when I was born. I've lived with her ever since our parents divorced."

"Ah," Will takes another sip of coffee, this time remembering to blow on it.

This young woman is nothing like the huntress in his dream. She would never have cast her eyes away.


	6. Chapter Five: THe Arrow of Lead

_All know of Cupid, the young and spritely god of Olympus, his deviousness and mischief rivaling even that of Mercury. Where Mercury was the king and father of manipulation and lies, Cupid was the revolutionary._

_He sprang from the union of lovely Venus and raging Mars, a bastard child, a son forged from lust and war. (It was these two failures of man, we know, for which Troy fell). He was as soft and cherubimical as a Christian angel, but ruthless, wicked, a wasp among gods and men alike, for both are vulnerable to his cloying sting._

_To represent the duel natures of the love for which he stood, Cupid possessed two arrows – a sharp-tipped and golden shaft to instill infatuation – and a blunt lead arrow to induce feelings of rejection, aversion to love, and a deep desire to flee._

_(One arrow fells the stag, the other saves the wolf.)_

_One day, for his own amusement, and also to prove himself the better archer, Cupid loosed his golden shaft and struck Apollo, the god of music, light, and reason. It pierced his heart with ease and joy._

_The arrow of lead hit home in the chest of Daphne, a beauteous nymph and the object of Apollo's desires. Its numbness spread to her heart, and when she beheld the god of music she felt only coldness. Apollo, drunk with desire, chased after her, and she fled in revulsion and fear._

_What follows after is well known. It concerns sandy shores, river gods, and trees – crowns woven from laurel leaves, which grace the heads of heroes. It is a mournful, elegiac tale much like a dream._

_Yes, an often-told tale, but few know of Cupid's dread involvement, of the grinning puppeteer who hid in the rafters, tangling strings, letting them go, only ever wishing to see the picture formed when they fell to earth. Why? Because it is a variation, not always present, a mere alternate version of a classic myth._

_Now, doesn't that sound familiar?_

_After all, we are all taught of a kind and helpless Actaeon. Pay no heed to the man behind the curtain._

_Do not dare to look above you, for you will take notice of all the strings, so fine and singing, and they will lead you to the puppet master._

* * *

_10:35 p.m., Prince William County, Virginia_

The Old Salem Street Bar is buzzing this time of night, the allure of cheap liquor and women too much to bear for bachelors and husbands alike.

A thin and dark-haired woman leans against the bar, giggling and chatting with the tender on the other side. They seem old acquaintances to any looking on, with the barkeep pouring her drink after drink and slyly pointing at the men clustered around the bar. None would seem particularly appealing to a woman as gently beautiful as this one, but no two people are ever looking for the exact same thing.

A man in his late forties, heavyset, with graying hair, sidles up to the counter and snaps for a drink.

The dark-haired woman glances down at the man's large hand, making not of his wedding ring. Her eyes flash grimly, but only for a moment, and then she grins, twisting a strand of hair around her finger. Each strand, clearly defined against the others, falls in brown waves over her shoulder.

The man offers to buy her a drink.

The woman watches soberly as he removes the ring from his finger and slickly palms it into his trouser pocket. Then her eyes un-focus, and she leans heavily against the bar.

A moment later, two glasses plop down between them. The barkeeper offers an encouraging smile and a hard-eyed nod before turning away.

* * *

_1:36 a.m., Prince William County, Virginia_

The barkeeper locks the door with a sigh, watching the last remaining patrons stumble their ways into the parking lot.

One in particular, a Mister Richard Booth, looks particularly unsteady on his feet.

Friends call him Dick. Rival coworkers call him that too, but it means something a little different. He had told that much to the lovely woman at the bar and she had laughed softly. He likes that, the seeming funny, the attention getting, nothing like what home is like these days.

He had gotten a phone number too, which was something he might consider. He tugs the napkin on which it's written out of his pocket and squints at it, but finds that the digits dim and dance. Usually, he thinks, he can hold his liquor better than most men, but tonight feels different.

He leans against his car. At least, he thinks that it is his car. He can't think much of anything at the moment. He holds the napkin closer to his face and frowns into the darkness.

The world is shifting, reeling, both blinding and dark at the same time. His insides are going warm and vaporous. A wave of nausea takes him, bringing with it a spell of dizziness that makes him suddenly forget how to stand.

Hands are on him before he even hits the asphalt, woman's hands, strong, capable.

Richard Booth groans as he slides along the slick, cold, ground, turning his head half-heartedly and catching one fleeting glance of his attacker.

He can't see much of anything in his dark, drugged world (yes, he knows now something other than alcohol is casting shadows on his senses), only the sheen of white, wind-chaffed, skin in November starlight and a fall of dark hair over the woman's shoulder.

Another second, and he can't see anything at all.

Ten minutes later there is a series of grunts and the sound of a trunk being resolutely shut.

A car door slams, the ignition roars, and a car slowly leaves the parking lot. Then it is silent.

A soft breeze blows pleasantly through the empty parking spaces, whistling around the sole car that remains. It waits dutifully, as machines are wont to do, for an owner who is never going to drive again.

A napkin flutters on the ground where it has been dropped, stained and crumpled. The breeze rises, and it flies beneath the car, lodging itself against the front right wheel.

It lurches, yearning to be free, bearing to the winter darkness the numbers and dashes scrawled upon it in black ink.


	7. Chapter Six: The Raving Ones

_She's slipping, _Will thought, and his breath ghosted in the air – a puff of frozen white hanging in the stark cold carried on by the first days of December. He watches critically as Price and Zeller comb the black sedan sitting plaintively before him, ownerless and dusted with early smatterings of snow.

The first flurries of the winter had come the night before.

The body of Richard Booth had been found the morning after.

Only weeks earlier Martin Bishop had been discovered, naked, frozen. Booth's body had offered up none of the clues that the first had, the wound was open and clean, the arrow removed. This killer, this archer, was becoming more meticulous.

And yet things were beginning to fall apart, and, as they fell, other, clearer things were coming together.

Will stands in the front parking lot of The Old Salem Street Bar, surrounded by a team of forensic scientists. When Booth's wife had called in to report her husband's disappearance days before, her complaints had barely registered. Earlier, at the precinct, after she identified her husband's rigid body, she was more furious than concerned. Her statements to the police were wrought with outbursts about her husband's 'disgusting habits', his drinking, his other women, but she quickly exhausted herself. After she was spent she had simply put her head in her hands and rocked back and forth in her chair, her ranting replaced by low, helpless moans.

Will and Jack had left soon after and come to the place Richard Booth had last been seen – the bar his wife identified as his most frequent haunt, and there they had found his car. Soon after the forensic team had followed, but there was little to be found.

Still, they had discovered her hunting ground. The huntress must always return, even if it is only once, and there are other players in the wilderness.

Will realizes that, just as he is watching the forensic team go about their careful work, Jack Crawford is regarding him steadily from the other side of the car. As soon as he notices, however, the special agent jerks his head towards the bar's entrance and motions for Will to follow him.

It is time to meet the witness.

* * *

Elijah Wright is an old man, gaunt and slow, but still harboring an energetic spark behind watery blue eyes. He sits at a low table in the near empty bar, Jack Crawford and Will Graham balanced on a tabletop in front of him.

"What exactly was your relationship to Mr. Booth?" Jack asks slowly, his brow furrowed, as it often is, into a deep V of contemplation.

"I used to teach him," the old man says openly, "back in the day." He gestures vaguely to the west with a frail hand. "They tore down the high school about a decade ago, but I taught history there for seventeen years. I remember Richard, he was a good kid. "

Elijah Wright got a faraway look in his eyes then, and Will, for all of his empathy, could not see all of the old man's remembrance. It went far too deep, and it was filled with far too much longing.

"When did you arrive here on the night of the twenty-ninth?" Jack inquires, all business, just like always.

"I got here around ten," Wright replies. He pauses for a moment, chuckles, and says, "Would you believe I haven't touched alcohol in nine years? Not since Eurydice died. That was my wife's name."

"Then why did you come here?" Will asks, looking hard at the man before him.

Elijah Wright looks back, his old eyes glistening, and he smiles sadly.

"It gets lonely at my house. It's even emptier in the winter, when she's not there. I just missed her that night, that's all, the night got in. I thought I'd come down here and warm up, have a drink." He pauses, and Will notices how the skin that droops around his eyes quivers. "But when the time came," the old man continues, "I just ordered a water."

"At what time did you see Richard Booth," Jack asks.

"About a half hour later," Wright responds slowly, looking up and to the left as he recalls the details, "he was talking to a young lady at the bar, buying her drinks, but he was drinking more than she was. It looked odd, I suppose. She was young and pretty, and, well, Richard isn't – _wasn't_ – the kid he was back in high school."

Jack and Will exchange a glance, a subtle '_bingo' _passing between them.

"Do you think you would be able to describe this woman to a sketch artist," Jack asks politely. Wright nods, his jowls quivering.

"I suppose so."

"I'll have Mr. Graham accompany you back to F.B.I. Headquarters," Jack says, clapping Will on the back. The jolt nearly knocks off the profiler's spectacles, and he quickly pushes them back up the bridge of his nose.

"Are you staying here?" Will asks, rising hurriedly. Jack nods in affirmation, looking cooling once more around the bar.

"I'm going to see if I can find out who was tending the bar that night. If that doesn't lead anywhere, I'll see if the forensic team turns up anything."

In that sentence, Will hears a silent thought. _I cannot leave, _it says, _if no one is watching, what then? _

_(A note: For some, it is better not to look behind, back into the shadows that you have passed. As Elijah Wright has so clearly illustrated for us, remembering those lost brings only sorrow. Sometimes even attempts at resurrection result in more grief, even more death.)_

* * *

_The tale of Orpheus and Eurydice is another cautionary tale provided for your consideration. Orpheus was a legendary musician and poet, and Eurydice was his beloved wife. She died in agony from a viper bite and was borne down to the Underworld for all eternity. The distraught Orpheus followed, and begged to have her returned to the land of the living. The music of his lyre and voice persuaded even the stonehearted Hades and his cold wife, Persephone. _

_However, the condition was attached that Orpheus must walk before his bride as they returned to the upper world, and he could not look back upon her face until she had crossed the threshold. As they walked, Orpheus began to doubt the promise of Hades, and even as he passed out of the shadows his mind began to cloud with the dark of his suspicion. When he could bear it no longer, he turned to gaze upon the face of Eurydice._

_It was the last time he saw her before she vanished back into the Underworld._

_Orpheus mourned once more, regretting his foolishness. He wept long and sang of death and sorrow, until the Maenads, mad women of the forest, tore him to shreds and tossed his quartered body into the river. When he died, his soul traveled to the Underworld to reunite with his beloved Eurydice._

_(Well, the Greeks and Romans were never renowned for their light humor.) _

_Some ancient writers, such as Plato, paint this myth in a different light. Orpheus is portrayed as a coward, fairly punished, for he mocked Hades and the court of the Underworld when he attempted to retrieve his bride._

_But there is a little known detail often forgotten in the classical myth itself._

_The Maenads followed Bacchus, god of wine, and it was he who ordered Orpheus's death. He joins Cupid and Actaeon in the ranks of hidden villains and puppet masters, for who would suspect him? The youngest of the Olympian gods, guardian over ecstasy and survivor of rebirth, but also king of ritual madness._

_As it is said, the death of one man renders the killer a murderer. It takes a conqueror to kill millions, but to kill them all, to make blood flow like wine at a grape harvest, that is what makes man a god._


	8. Chapter Seven: Water Through a Sieve

"Do you live around here?" Elijah Wright asks.

Will cringes slightly; the man's words have disrupted what had been a perfectly amiable silence. The profiler sneaks a glance at the old man in the seat beside him before returning his gaze to the road. The trees on either side are crusted with powdered snow, and the sky is as gray as flint.

"Just a few miles southwest in Wolf Trap," he replies after what a normal conversationalist would regard as an impolite amount of time. Wright starts at the sound of Will's voice, the gentle rhythm of the police car's wheels rumbling over the asphalt having rocked him into a drowsy sense of contentment.

"Married?" He asks a moment later. Will only shakes his head in reply.

"Too bad," the old man says, "you seem a nice enough fellow."

"You don't know me all that well," Will replies tightly. He is trying his very best to keep his eyes on the road, but a pain is growing at the back of his head, and it makes it so that all he wants to do is close his eyes and go to sleep.

"Still, must get lonely," Wright muses, staring out the window at the frosted December landscape.

"I keep dogs," Will contests, determined to defend himself to the old man, perhaps to himself as well. Wright's face breaks out into a large grin, and the crinkles at the corners of his mouth reveal that his long life was not bereft of laughter.

"Now there's a fine endeavor," he says approvingly. "We always had a dog or two when I was growing up. There isn't a more loyal animal, my father used to say. How many?"

Will takes a moment to tally the number in his head. There was Winston, and Buster, and…

"Seven," he replies.

Wright chuckles and raises his eyebrows, "No room for a wife, then?"

Will pauses to imagine – would another human fit in amongst the dog beds, the fishing equipment, and the clutter? Would another human find any space left in his crowded head for them? Garret Jacob Hobbs's dead eyes, Elise Nichols in her bloodstained gown, the stag that lurked in every spare corner, they already took up so much room in his mind. Who would be willing to share a space with them? Alana wasn't, that much Will knew for sure.

And so he replies with a forced grin, "Yeah, no room for a wife," just as they pull up to the police station, and the car comes to an abrupt halt.

* * *

_Danaus and his twin brother Aegyptus were both princes of Egypt. Danaus had fifty daughters, the Danaides, who were born to various different women, and Aegyptus likewise had fathered fifty sons. The children grew into fine young men and women, and Aegyptus wished to find good wives for his sons. His eyes alighted on none other than his nieces, each one more lovely than the last; they would make fine brides. Much to Aegyptus's displeasure, Danaus was disgusted with the notion, and when Aegyptus demanded that he surrender his daughters, Danaus instead took them and fled in the world's first ship._

_Under the steady direction of the Danaides, the ship arrived safely in Argos, where Pelasgus, who ruled the city, granted them protection. But Aegyptus was close on their heels, and when he arrived with his fifty sons, Danaus was forced to relent, but he instructed each of his daughters to kill their husband on their wedding night. All obeyed save one, Hypermnestra, who spared her husband, Lynceus, because he respected her wish to retain her virginity (a wish not often honored in mythology, as evidenced by the tale of Diana and Actaeon)._

_When the Danaides died, all but Hypermnestra were punished in Tartarus, where they were forced to carry water in sieves and leaking jugs to fill a bath in a fruitless attempt to wash off their sins, but the water splashed out onto their feet, the bath stayed bone-dry, and the once beautiful Danaides grew hunch-backed and gaunt under the strain of their eternal toil._

_The story doesn't change much in each retelling, but it does leave the reader with a few questions._

_What was Danaus's punishment for his role in the massacre? In some accounts, he is murdered by Lynceus in revenge, but what of his fate in the underworld? Was he, like Tantalus, made to starve below lush olive branches swaying just out of reach and to go thirsty despite the cool water lapping at his waist? Was he, like Sisyphus, forced to roll a boulder up a mountain, only to have it slip from his fingers just before cresting the peak? The myth remains silent on the subject._

_But we know that Danaus is not wholly absolved of blame. He, like the Cupid and Bacchus (though Danaus's intentions seem a bit more justifiable), stayed in the shadows, never getting his hands dirty._

_Could it be that our killer is a Danaide, not a Danaus? Could there be another player here, a puppeteer, perhaps? Is Will Graham wise enough to see them?_

_No matter what the case, he is in grave danger indeed._

* * *

Special Agent Jack Crawford is beginning to feel the chill. He is a big, solid man, and the cup of coffee clutched tightly in his gloved hands warms him from the inside and the out, but the cold is persistent; it has a way of patiently waiting, pressing, burrowing down inside you. Jack Crawford nonetheless refuses to leave the parking lot until the yellow police tape has been taken down and all relevant equipment has been packed up.

Beverly Katz is taking her sweet time. Jack recognizes the poignant frustration on her face – he feels it too. The car has yielded nothing, and the snow has swept away any DNA evidence that may have been present. But still Jack Crawford waits, his sharp eyes scrutinizing the scene before him, watching for movement, a shift in color, waiting for his mind to make some kind of connection, but there is nothing, just the black car before him and the bleak sky above. Jack sighs, watching his breath ghost in the air, and decides that it is time to head back to FBI headquarters.

But then, just as he starts to turn away, the wind changes direction and gusts powerfully to the north, catching the tails of Jack's coat. A thin slip of white flies out from beneath Richard Booth's car and dances on the wind towards Crawford. Beverly Katz glances upwards, and sees the special agent reach out and catch the paper between thumb and forefinger, carefully smooth it, and squint down at it.

"What is it?" Beverly asks. The commotion has attracted the attention of Price and Zeller, who pause in the middle of lifting a fingerprint from the back window of the car.

Instead of responding, Crawford walks slowly towards them. As he approaches, Beverly realizes that the object in his hands is a crumpled napkin.

"Looks like it was trapped underneath one of the car wheels," she says, searching Jack's expression.

"There's a phone number written on it," he says slowly, "Look." He holds up the napkin, which flutters slightly in the still persistent wind, but Beverly can see the number written on it in black ink. The hand is careful and precise, clearly a woman's.

"Why don't you try calling it," Price suggests. Jack glances at him and then back at the napkin. He carefully sets his coffee cup down on top of the car and reaches into his pocket for his cellphone. Half turning away from the other three investigators, he begins to dial.

* * *

Detective Tracy Hicks sees Will Graham, but he does not see her, and she wastes no time immediately ducking into an empty office. Tracy does not want to talk to Will Graham at the moment. A number of factors have gone into the decision, including but not exclusive to some of the other female officers warnings about the profiler, warnings that tend to use words like "dangerous" and "unstable". Tracy finds no particular fault with Will Graham in those respects, though she has noticed that he is not a very stunning conversationalist, but she has other reasons.

Tracy Hicks cannot talk to Will Graham. Not at this moment, not during this case. She is not sure how much longer she can go before her charade falters under the profiler's undiscriminating gaze. Tracy finds herself unable to look him in the eyes. She is barred both by the frames of his glasses and her own impulsive desire to tell him the truth, and so she looks pointedly away.

But, Tracy reminds herself; she does need to make it back to her office, and to do so she does need to pass by Will Graham. Taking a deep breath, she sweeps out of the office and begins to walk briskly down the hall. As she begins to approach the place where Will Graham is standing, looking noncommittally down at his feet, she starts to entertain the fancy that he will not even notice that she is there.

Then, just as she walks past him, her phone rings in her pocket.

Will Graham looks up at the noise, and Tracy flashes him an embarrassed smile before frantically digging her phone out of her pocket, glancing at the caller ID, and raising it to her ear.

"Special Agent Crawford?" She inquires, peeking over at her shoulder at Will Graham, who has gone back to looking at his shoes. She turns away, but there is only silence on Jack's end. After a long pause, she hears his grave voice slowly ask,

"Detective Hicks?"

"Yes?"

There is another long pause.

"Sorry, wrong number," He says finally.

"All right," Tracy replies, somewhat puzzled. "But hey, did you find anything in Booth's car?"

"No," Jack says. There is something off about his tone, but Tracy can't put her finger on what it is. Before she can say another word, Jack hangs up abruptly. Frowning, Tracy puts her phone back in her pocket.

It is at that moment that the door beside which Will Graham is standing opens, and a weathered woman steps outside with a large sketchbook tucked under one arm. Tracy recognizes her as the district sketch artist.

"How'd it go?" Will asks her, glancing at the sketchbook. The woman sighs.

"Your witness has a remarkable memory, but the woman he is describing is, unfortunately, not remarkable."

"No distinguishing features, then?"

The sketch artist only shakes her head in response. Her hair is salt-and-pepper, her face slightly lined. She wears a severe, charcoal-gray pantsuit.

"You found a witness?" Tracy asks. Will looks up at her, eyebrows raised. He seems to have forgotten she is there.

"Yes," he replies, "but he doesn't seem to have been much use."

Tracy doesn't hear him. Her heart is pounding in her chest, and the blood that rushes in her ears is deafening.

A stooped old man ambles through the doorway out into the hall. He shakes the sketch artist's hand before turning to look at Will hopefully.

"Thank you for your time, Mr. Wright," the profiler says encouragingly, giving the old man an awkward pat on the shoulder. "Detective Hicks," he says, turning, "this is Elijah Wright."

The old man extends a hand, peering up into Tracy's face, but suddenly he freezes. Tracy sees recognition in his watery blue eyes.

"But," he says, looking confused, "that's the woman."

"I'm sorry?" Will asks. He seems not to have registered the statement.

"That's… That's the woman from the bar. The one who was talking to Richard." Wright's tone is uncertain, but his face is set in deep conviction. Tracy takes a slow, careful step backwards.

Will looks at her sharply. "Are you sure?"

"I swear on my life, that's the woman I saw."

Will takes a step towards Tracy, and, just for a moment, their eyes meet, and she knows deep in her heart that he knows, he knows.

She runs.

Will Graham's phone rings. He tugs it from his pocket, answers, shortly tells the person on the other line that he promises he will call them back and then hands the phone to a dumbfounded Elijah Wright before running after Tracy Hicks's disappearing form. He doesn't even bother to notice that the Caller ID says Jack Crawford.

Tracy has never run faster in her life. Her heels skid on the floor whenever she reaches a corner, and any unsuspecting employee who happens to wander into her path is shoved rudely aside as she passes.

Will Graham's footsteps pound behind her.

"Detective Hicks, stop!" She hears him shout. "I just want to talk to you!" But she knows that this is a lie, just as she knows that she is only a hundred feet away from the door that leads out into the parking lot, and once she is there, it is a mere ten feet to her car, and then a four mile drive to her house in Ravensworth.

Once there, she knows not what she'll do. Warn her sister, probably, start running (again), change her name, perhaps, if that will suffice.

Ninety feet, eighty feet, now she is approaching seventy feet, and through the glass doors she can see the snow dusted parking lot and her silver car, which is parked just nearby.

Sixty feet, fifty feet, forty-

And then she is tackled from behind, and the view of the doors is abruptly replaced by the cold floor beneath her as she falls, hard.

The net closes.

The hunt is over.

(_A correction: The hunt is over for now._)


	9. Chapter Eight: Making Monsters

Doctor Alana Bloom strides purposefully through the halls of the FBI headquarters in Richmond, Virginia. She is blissfully unaware that the faint scratches on the floor beneath her feet were made just hours before by a killer's heels, and the thought that she is about to come face to face with the killer herself does not worry her.

Alana has had her fair share of dangerous patients, but she has always retained her poise and confidence, both of which radiate from her as she walks, turning the heads of many of the male employees who pass her as well as several of the female ones. She is dressed in a crisp, patterned skirt and deep crimson sweater, a uniform completed by her near-constant expression of gentle severity and her practiced smile, the trademark of a psychiatrist.

"Doctor Bloom, glad you could make it on such short notice," Jack Crawford says, grinning his gap-toothed smile as Alana reaches the door to the interrogation room. He politely hands her a number of files, which Alana skims over before tucking them under her arm. Will Graham stands a few feet behind Jack, looking like he is somewhere else entirely. He declines to greet her, and Alana is both thankful and a trifle disappointed. "She's all yours," Jack says, gesturing to the door. He and Will slip silently into the observation room, and Alana takes a deep breath before softening her expression and opening the door.

Once inside, the familiar sight of plain, blue-gray walls greets her, as well as the sheen of a wide mirror, on the other side of which she knows Jack and Will are watching the room with steady eyes. In the middle of the room there is a smooth steel table and two chairs. A young, dark-haired woman sits on the other side of the table, staring at her knees. She looks up when she hears the creak of the door, and Alana decides that her face is rather plain, but the kind of plain that can become astonishingly beautiful with the proper care and presentation.

"Would you like something to drink?" Alana asks, settling into her seat. The woman shakes her head wordlessly. _Okay, _Alana thinks to herself, laying the files down on the table. "Detective Tracy Hicks," she says, "you moved to Ravensworth, Virginia, about a year ago, is that right?"

The woman nods, then, when Alana continues looking pointedly at her, she whispers, "Yes."

"And before that you lived in… Hyde County, North Carolina?"

"Yes."

"Why did you move?"

"My… My sister got a job here."

"You live with your sister, Dinah Hicks, correct?

"Yes."

Alana selects a cream-colored file and opens it, deftly spreading its contents across the tabletop.

"Now," she says, settling her elbows on the table. "Where were you the night of November fifteenth?"

* * *

"I want you to interview the sister," Jack says to Will, "find out if she knows anything. If you leave now, you can get there before dark."

Will thinks to himself that he will also be missing his appointment with Doctor Lecter, just as he has missed last week's. The thought concerns him more than usual, but he decides that the case is more important. He nods to Jack before leaving, but the special agent's eyes never leave the two women visible behind the one-way mirror.

"I was getting dinner at a restaurant," Tracy Hicks is saying as she twiddles her thumbs beneath the table. Alana glances at her file.

"At the Corsica Restaurant in Quantico?" She asks amiably. Jack thinks to himself that Doctor Bloom is in possession of a truly magnificent voice. Pleasantly husky, it makes a person want to trust her, a truly excellent attribute for someone in her profession.

Tracy nods. She is being extraordinarily obedient, Jack thinks, for someone who just a few hours earlier sprinted halfway across the building in thirty seconds flat. A dark purple bruise is forming on her chin, the only visible reminder of her encounter with Will Graham.

"And at what time did you encounter Martin Bishop?"

"I guess it was about an hour after I got there, so about nine o' clock."

"Late dinner," Alana observes. Tracy doesn't respond. "Did he tell you that he was married?" Bloom continues.

"I saw the ring on his finger, if that's what you're asking," Tracy replies. "He took it off once I noticed it."

"And this didn't bother you?"

"It wasn't like I was going home with him."

Alana looks at Tracy with a critical eye before she picks up a file and begins to leaf through it.

"Three months ago," she says, "You purchased twelve green-fletched yew arrows from the Telstar Sporting Goods store in Raleigh, is that correct?"

"Yes."

"One of these arrows was used to kill Martin Bishop on the night of November fifteenth," Alana says, punctuating the statement by removing a photograph and sliding it across the table. Tracy gives it a cursory glance before looking away. Jack sees her Adam's apple bob in her throat as she swallows.

"We found a similar wound on Richard Booth," Alana continues, sliding a second photograph towards Tracy, who doesn't bother to look this time. "We have a witness who places you at the Old Salem Street Bar on the night of December second, where Richard Booth was last seen." Alana clasps her hands and leans forward on her elbows. "Do you want to tell me what happened on those two nights?"

Tracy continues to look at her hands for another handful of seconds. Then, Jack sees her inhale and sit up straight, looking Alana Bloom in the eyes for the first time.

"If you wouldn't mind," she says evenly, "I would like to talk to a lawyer."

* * *

_Medusa was once a fair maiden with hair like flax and fine green eyes. A priestess of Athena, she had taken a vow of celibacy, much to the displeasure of her aspiring suitors. The most prominent, Poseidon, the Earth-Shaker, wooed her anyway. At this point, interpretations of the myth become divided. _

_According to Ovid, Poseidon, on the floor of Athena's temple, rapes Medusa, which, according to Perseus, is a crime befitting the punishment Medusa later receives. When the story is told to children, this violent assault is instead portrayed as a willing marriage. Medusa purposefully violates her vows, and Athena's rage is justified. _

_No matter the telling, Medusa's punishment remains the same: she is cursed so that her once-beautiful face becomes so hideous that all who look upon it turn to stone, and her golden hair becomes a nest of writhing snakes. This, in the eyes of the Greek hero Perseus, is a fitting punishment for being a victim of rape. _

_This myth is a sharp contrast to that of Diana (or Artemis) and Actaeon. When Actaeon attempts to force himself on Diana, the goddess punishes _him, _transforming _him _into a beast. Why, then, does Athena, another virgin goddess, a goddess of war only when it is waged for just causes, punish a victim? Some say it is due to Athena's unresolved conflicts with her father, Zeus, but what if Medusa's petrifying visage was not a punishment, but a gift? _

_Athena could not enact vengeance against Poseidon, her uncle, brother of Zeus and god of the mighty oceans. But she could make sure that no other man would ever harm her priestess again. And so she gave her a weapon – a head of serpents to bite and poison the man foolish enough to come near, a face that will turn her enemies to stone. Is it so hard to believe? _

_Could Tracy Hicks be a Gorgon, in her way? If so, who created her? Who could create such a monster? Who could create the need for such a monster? Where do we look to find Athena and Poseidon? They are there, above you, standing beside Actaeon, Cupid, Bacchus, and Danaus, their arms outstretched above the stage, each flick of a finger pulling a string and moving the puppets below._

* * *

Will Graham drives, and, as he drives, he thinks. He recalls talking to Tracy Hicks a mere three-and-a-half weeks earlier. He remembers how she told him, a spot of color reaching her cheeks, that she had no talent for archery, no talent at all. Will is positive now that she was simply bluffing – the wounds found on Martin Bishop and Richard Booth testify that the arrows that made them had been shot with near surgical precision – but he cannot shake the feeling that he is missing something important.

When he finally reaches the Hicks household, it is twilight, and the sky is blue-gray above the dense woods that surround the house. The building itself is quaint, albeit a rather sad example of Colonial Revival architecture. It reminds Will a little of his own house, but the porch here is smaller, the atmosphere less inviting.

Will exits his car and is met with a cold wind. He shivers, wrapping his coat tight around him, and walks up the stairs to the porch. The paint on the columns is chipping, and Will runs a thumb over one before pressing the doorbell. He hears a rustle behind the door, then footsteps, and then the door swings wide to reveal a woman in her forties with wiry dark hair and an accommodating smile.

"Dinah Hicks?" Will asks. The woman's resemblance to Tracy is striking, so the question is a formality.

"That's me. What can I do you for?"

"I'm Will Graham. I'm with the FBI." He flashes the woman his badge.

"Ah, you must work with my sister," the woman says, "Come on inside; it's colder than belly-blue hell out there." She waves Will inside. "I was just about to put the kettle on," she says, closing and locking the door, "is Earl Grey fine with you?"

"Yes, thank you."

The woman bustles off to the kitchen, leaving Will standing in the hall. He begins to remove his coat but hesitates when it is halfway off his shoulders.

He has the peculiar feeling that he has just stepped into a bear trap.


	10. Chapter Nine: The Hunt

Hannibal Lecter is unused to the FBI facilities in Richmond, Virginia, preferring instead the sleek architecture and rich furnishings of the Baltimore headquarters, but he nonetheless strides inside as if he owns the place, his coat billowing behind him like it is caught in a draft. There is a great anger brewing inside the doctor, but his expression betrays none of it. The miniscule change in the set of his mouth provides the sole clue to his inner state, but it is only noticeable to those familiar to the doctor and to those with uncommonly good perception.

Jack Crawford is both of these things, but he is quite distracted and therefore does not notice the harshness with which the doctor clears his throat, prompting Jack to turn.

"Doctor Lecter, what a pleasant surprise," Jack says, smiling broadly and exposing the prominent gap between his two front teeth. The slight dental imperfection gives the special agent an air of friendliness and reliability, hiding the fact that he is indeed highly trained and just as highly dangerous. Jack has long considered it an advantage.

Hannibal offers a tight smile in return, and Jack once again fails to detect the rage behind it.

"Jack," Hannibal begins, "this is the second appointment Will has missed due to this case."

Jack's face falls. "My apologies, Doctor Lecter. We've all been so preoccupied here that –"

"You may recall," Hannibal interrupts, "that I was hired at the behest of Doctor Bloom to provide my services to Will as a favor to you. According to you, the damage these cases do to his mind renders those appointments absolutely necessary. If I am unable to help him because he is too occupied with a case, my efforts become useless."

Jack seems poised to reply when a nearby door bursts open, and a woman in handcuffs is pushed unceremoniously through it. A guard emerges afterwards and leads the woman past the two men and down the hallway. As they pass, Hannibal gets a good look at the woman – young, dark-haired, somberness in her eyes. He also catches her scent and inhales deeply.

Scientists say that Rohypnal has no odor, but that is only when it is dissolved in liquid. Once it leaves the pores, Hannibal Lecter's extraordinary nose easily distinguishes its bitter, faintly acrid aroma. It is also not the only component of the drug cocktail he assumes has been administered to the girl sometime in the past twenty-four hours. No, there's Valium, Xanax, and the doctor also detects hints of various herbal sedatives that even he cannot quite identify. If the information with which Will had so generously supplied him is to be believed, this is the same combination of drugs found in the veins of both Martin Bishop and Richard Booth.

"Well, Doctor Lecter," Jack says, gesturing at the woman's retreating form, "your patient won't be tied up in this case much longer. We've caught the killer. Her name's Tracy Hicks. Will may have mentioned her; she's worked here for a little over three months."

If he were anyone other than Hannibal Lecter, the thought that would spring to mind would be something along the lines of "Bullshit", but the doctor is more refined, and so he simply nods in approval, all the while thinking to himself, _No, you're wrong. She holds her head high, but there's a weakness in her that you're too blind to see._

"I see," Lecter says pleasantly. "Where are they taking her?"

"She's submitted to a drug test. Standard procedure."

"And where is Will?"

"I sent her to interview the sister. We've got a witness, but no definitive motive so far. Knowing Will, he'll take one look at the house and be able to tell me her motive, preferred laundry detergent, and favorite color."

Again, a less sophisticated man would think "Bingo" at this moment, but Hannibal is anything but unsophisticated, and so he simply asks,

"What is the address? I assume it is near where the bodies were found."

"Out of the way house in Ravensworth."

"Thank you. I apologize for taking up so much of your time, Jack," Hannibal says, the picture of innocence.

"Nonsense. You're welcome to come down anytime."

Hannibal turns away. He has what he needs: a name, an approximation of an address. All he needs is a phonebook. The most important thing he has is a powerful hunch, but if there is any possibility that Will is in danger, a hunch is enough.

Doctor Lecter doesn't pause to consider why he should be so preoccupied with the young criminal profiler. The explanation he offers himself is simple; Will is a friend, a like-minded soul, a man with immense potential if only he could be led in the right direction. Hannibal doesn't stop to contemplate the idea that his obsession, and yes, there is no point in calling it anything else, is merely the manifestation of a desire that is at once carnal and spiritual, a lust and a salvation.

And there is another option that Hannibal refuses even to acknowledge; it is too dangerous, too unwieldy, for Hannibal remembers the pain he felt when last he allowed himself to _love_.

* * *

"One or two sugars, Mister Graham?" Dinah Hicks calls from the kitchen.

"Just one is fine, thank you," Will replies. He sits in an armchair patterned in kitsch green floral across from a weathered rocking chair in the living room. The house is warm and pine-scented, but Will cannot ignore the feeling of deep discomfort in the pit of his stomach. He glances at the mantelpiece to distract himself and observes a series of family pictures that seem to be placed in chronological order.

To the far left is a photograph of two attractive parents and their daughters – one, a coltish teenager with dark eyeliner, the other barely a toddler. Will assumes the teen to be Dinah, as it would explain the age difference between she and her sister. There are no other photos that show all four family members together at the same time. _A divorce, _Will thinks. One picture shows slightly older daughters with their father at Thanksgiving; in another he sees an elementary school age Tracy with her Mother, a Christmas tree in the background.

In a far right picture, Will sees whom at first he believes to be Tracy at about thirteen proudly holding a gold trophy in the shape of an archer. Then he notices that the outline of her face is all wrong, the shade of her hair different, and he realizes that this is not s picture of Tracy but of her sister. The photos aren't in chronological order at all.

_Dinah was the archery champion, then, _he thinks to himself, but he convinces himself that it doesn't mean anything.

"Careful, it's still hot," says a woman's voice, and Will turns to see Dinah Hicks emerge from the kitchen holding to steaming mugs of tea. As Will accepts his, he notices the worn calluses on the woman's fingers, calluses consistent with a lifetime of pulling back bowstrings.

Dinah sits down in the rocking chair opposite Will and crosses her legs at the knee.

"So Mister Graham," she begins, "to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?"

Will glances at his mug, unsure of how to reply.

"Your sister has just been charged with the murder of two men," he says slowly.

Dinah stares at him for a moment and then sighs.

"I was hoping it wasn't going to come to this," she says regretfully.

"If you can give us any information that might explain your sister's actions, we would be extraordinarily grateful."

Dinah rises and crosses to the mantelpiece. She sets down her mug and lifts the Thanksgiving photo up to her face. "The divorce was difficult for Tracy," she says heavily. "Dad cheated, of course, but that wasn't the sort of thing you tell a girl her age. She didn't find out until a good ten years later. She told me she'd always suspected, but it wasn't until then that she got up the courage to ask me. That's when Dad disappeared."

Will straightens. He'd assumed the killer to be a jilted lover, but no. Here was the root of all the anger and pain, the sins of the father, the birth of a killer. Dinah sets the picture back down on the mantelpiece and glances at him.

"Drink your tea Mister Graham. Don't want it to go cold."

Will complies. The warmth diffuses across his tongue and down his throat, an excellent antidote for the freezing weather. The tea tastes unassuming, though Will does not think he has ever had this brand before.

"We all figured that Dad had run off with someone younger and didn't want to pay child support anymore," Dinah continues, "but I knew the truth. Tracy definitely knew."

"Your father is dead, isn't he?" Will asks.

"Unfortunately," Dinah confirms with a sigh, "but we thought it was best to let Mom keep on believing otherwise. Besides, I needed to protect Tracy. I've always protected her."

Will leans forward in his chair. "Dinah," he pleads, "the best thing you can do for your sister now is to tell us everything you know."

"Of course." The woman turns away from the mantelpiece. "I think I need a moment, if you wouldn't mind."

"Whatever you need."

Dinah nods and vanishes back into the kitchen. Will relaxes back into his chair and takes another long sip of his tea. He detects something off about the taste this time, something slightly salty. Deciding that he does not trust these homemade herbal recipes, he sets the mug carefully down on the coffee table.

"Sorry for the wait, Mister Graham."

Will looks up and freezes. Dinah enters the room casually, a bow and quiver of arrows held loosely in one hand. She sets them down on the mantelpiece and begins to pull on her gloves. Will reaches instinctively for his gun, realizing too late that he had taken it off while still at the station.

"If you'd had a gun, I would have shot you the second you sat down," Dinah explains. "But it looks like we're going to have a bit more fun. If you refuse to play, I can always get my shotgun. That's how I killed my father, you know. But a gun's messy; it lacks finesse. It's all about the result, not the hunt." She begins to examine the bow, checking for imperfections, and Will carefully rises from his chair. Dinah pretends not to notice. "For the first couple years, I could draw them to me myself, but after a while all they want is fresh meat. It pays to have a pretty little sister."

As Will creeps towards the front door, he suddenly feels sluggish, dazed. Normally he wouldn't worry, but now one burst of speed could mean the difference between life and death.

"You mustn't blame Tracy," Dinah says, picking up an arrow and looking critically at it. She doesn't seem at all bothered by Will's escape. "She wanted nothing to do with it. But put a little something in her drink and a girl can barely remember what she did last night."

_Are you the fisherman or the lure? _Will thinks to himself, but his mind is so scattered he can't comprehend what that means.

"Martin Bishop was a fat piggy," Dinah says, looking coldly at Will. "He barely gave me a chase at all, but you look like you take care of yourself, Mister Graham. I'll have plenty of fun with you. Good thing you didn't drink too much of that tea."

Will glances in horror at the enamel mug on the coffee table, realizing too late that he's been drugged.

"Let's see how fast you run," Dinah Hicks growls, raising her bow and arrow.

Will wastes no time darting to the door, frantically turning the lock, and bolting out into the night. Dinah follows leisurely and stops at the front door. She waits for the dark-haired man to disappear into the woods that surround the house, and then she closes her eyes.

After a count of ten, they open, and the hunt begins.

"Jack? The results of the drug test are in," Beverly Katz says.

Jack immediately notices the lack of enthusiasm in the young woman's voice and he takes the results from her, concerned.

"We found traces of Rohypnal, Valium, Xanax, and Valerian in her system," Katz informs him as he studies the papers.

"Those are the same drugs administered to the victims."

"Exactly. Also, remember how you wanted to know who was tending the bar the night Richard Booth went missing?"

"Yeah."

"Well, the owner initially said it was his son, but it turns out he asked someone else to take his shift."

"Who was working then?"

"The suspect's sister, Dinah Hicks."

Jack stares at Beverly, and their exchanged glance shares confusion, then realization, and, ultimately, fear.

"Will," Jack breathes.

Too little, too late.

Will runs, gasping, through the woods, pine needles and branches stinging his face, his feet stumbling over roots hidden in the snow. The sedatives he has consumed are not debilitating, but the full moon above does swim in front of his eyes, and his muscles scream in protest at the activity.

Still, he knows he cannot slow, for he hears the crunching of footfalls close on his heels. The huntress has not released an arrow yet, but she will soon; he is sure of it.

His foot catches on a rock, and he hits the ground hard, tearing his left sleeve at the elbow. The forest is deathly cold, but his winter coat still hangs in a murderer's closet, and it can't help him now. Breathing heavily, Will scrambles to his feet and begins to run again, but the fall has cost him precious yards, and now he can nearly hear Dinah's breathing as she closes in behind him.

Without warning, she looses an arrow. She has never missed before, but Will hears the whistling sound seconds before it hits home, and he veers to the right. Instead of killing him, the arrow digs a long bloody furrow in his left side before striking a tree, and Will lets out a sharp cry of pain. He stumbles but manages to right himself and keeps running. He can see the road through the trees, a pair of headlights far in the west, approaching him. Perhaps he can catch the attention of the driver.

His pounding heart causes the wound in his side to bleed profusely, staining his shirt dark crimson. He presses a hand to the wound, feels it sting, presses onward.

Another arrow whistles by, missing Will my mere inches. She's underestimated his speed, but speed will mean nothing when exhaustion and pain overtake him and he collapses. The drugs too are beginning to take stronger effect. All Will Graham wants to do is sleep, but he knows that if he falls, he will sleep forever.

Mustering one final surge of speed, the criminal profiler bursts out onto the road. At the same time, an arrow comes out of nowhere and lodges in his calf, not deep, but painful nonetheless. Will groans in pain, makes it a few more yards, and then he collapses near the edge of the road. The pain in his leg and side dull to nearly bearable as he turns to look upon his fate.

Dinah Hicks strides out into the road, the final arrow poised, her mouth set in a determined grin. She raises her arms, draws back the string, and –

Suddenly she is awash in the yellow glow of headlights, and she barely has time to look in startled surprise at the speeding car barreling out of the west before it strikes her and crushes her beneath the wheels. Will stares in shock at the car for a moment before he recognizes the profile of the man seated in the driver's seat. Slowly the man opens the car door and steps out onto the road.

With his long coat trailing behind him in the cold winter breeze and the incandescent shine of the headlights at his back, Will thinks that Hannibal Lecter has never looked more like an angel.


	11. Chapter Ten: The Stag

Will Graham dozes in the passenger seat of Hannibal Lecter's car, just barely eavesdropping on the argument taking place outside. The imposing shapes of Hannibal and Jack Crawford block the moonlight from streaming in through the car window, leaving Will in artificial darkness.

"We need to take him to a hospital," Will hears Jack say. The special agent keeps his hands in his pockets to ward off the cold, but his tone betrays an unchangeable persistence.

"I have already examined Will's wounds," Hannibal replies amiably. "They are not serious. What he needs is rest, and, if you have any intention of ever listening to my advice, I would recommend a short vacation."

At the moment, Will agrees with Hannibal. The wounds, though they ache, aren't bad, and Hannibal has already bandaged them with exquisite care. Will tugs a shock blanket around his shoulders and settles into the leather seat of Hannibal's Bentley. The car, like everything else in the doctor's life, is well kempt, and the pleasant scent of good leather and the doctor's aftershave make it quit easy for Will to tune out the voices outside. Assisted greatly by the sedatives in his system, he manages to doze through Jack's pleading arguments and Hannibal's sharp rebuttals, and he has nearly slipped into a dreamless sleep when the driver's side door opens and a puff of frozen air chills him to the bone.

Hannibal gets into the car and starts the engine, which grumbles to life at a pitch not dissimilar to the doctor's voice.

"Are we leaving?" Will manages, though his speech is slurred.

"I'm taking you home," Hannibal replies, and they begin to drive away from the scene. Will glances through the window at the body of Dinah Hicks. Her eyes are glassy, and arrows lie about her, some broken, others still intact. Just before the car turns a bend and the body vanishes from sight, Will sees the paramedics lift the body onto a stretcher. The movement of her limbs is so unexpected that Will thinks for just a moment that she is still alive.

"Thank you," Will says after a few minutes of silence.

"It was my pleasure," Hannibal replies, his expression not faltering from its eternal serenity.

"I owe you one," Will mutters.

"An understatement," Hannibal contests, "but seeing you alive and intact is compensation enough."

Sometimes Will wishes that Hannibal were a bit less polite. He cannot remember the last time he saw a genuine emotion pass across the doctor's inpenetrable mask, not rage, not sorrow. If it were not for the nearly oppressive nature of his presence in the car next to him, Will would suspect that Hannibal was not, in fact, human. Then again, the heat that practically radiates from him and the heady scent of his cologne begs to differ.

Will glances sidelong at the other man, noting the way his profile cuts against the moonlight like a scythe, the way the sharp curve of his cheekbone casts a deep shadow on his collar. Something is bothering Will, but he cannot quite place it through the haze of pain and sedation.

"Hannibal," he says finally. The doctor's ears prick up – it isn't often that Will uses such terms of familiarity. Surnames act much in the way a pair of glasses do; they place another layer of separation between him and the person to whom he is speaking.

"Yes, Will?" Hannibal replies, sneaking a glance at the man beside him before returning his attention to the road.

"You didn't just safe my life; you killed someone for me. You seem unusually calm about it."

Hannibal takes a long time to respond. When he does, his words are measured and precise.

"When I was a surgeon," he begins, "there was always a chance that a patient could not be saved. Once I had been surrounded by death for so long, I began to believe that I had become desensitized to it, but when it came time for someone to die on my own table, I found that this was not the case. Since then, I've found it's better to regard death as sometimes being a necessity.

Will nods, satisfied, though he still feels as if Lecter is holding something back. "I don't know if I can think like that," he says, turning to look out the window.

"To each his own," Hannibal replies.

_To each his own, _Will thinks, memorizing the way the words roll off the doctor's tongue, his tone, his inflections.

They drive in relative silence for the remainder of the trip, for which Will is grateful. The conversation has deadened his last reserves of energy to the point that, when Hannibal finally pulls into the driveway, he dreads having to leave the warm sanctuary of the car. Hannibal exits, rounds the car, and opens the passenger side door before offering a hand.

Will accepts it gratefully and, shrugging off the shock blanket, climbs to his feet. His right leg immediately buckles beneath him, but Hannibal halts his descent with a strong arm, which snakes around his ribs and secures him tightly.

"Why don't you lean on me?" Hannibal suggests, and Will nods. After regaining his balance, he slips an arm around Hannibal's neck, and the two begin their awkward journey to the front door. An onlooker would be given the impression of a four-legged spider with a fifth leg already on its way out struggling to cross the driveway. Once at the door, Will fumbles with the key for a moment before sliding it into the lock and finally escaping the cold.

He slips out of Hannibal's grasp to flick on the light switch, and the movement of his arm tugs at the bandages beneath it, eliciting a short burst of pain. Will groans and presses a hand against his side, but he is comforted somewhat by the group of dogs that flock eagerly to him.

"Hi, Winston," Will chuckles, patting one of the larger dogs on the heads. He glances up to see Hannibal staring in concern at him.

"I'm afraid I wasn't able to clean your wounds sufficiently before. Come, I'll draw you a bath."

Will freezes – the idea of being unclothed and submerged in the other man's presence isn't appealing, but Hannibal _is _his doctor, and above all else, Will trusts his opinion.

"If you could direct me to your washroom…" Hannibal inquires, his eyes surveying the rather shoddy state of Will's home.

"Oh, it's over here," Will says, beginning to make his way across the living room, but his leg once again falters beneath him, and Hannibal lends the service of his arm. Once inside the bathroom, Hannibal sweeps away the shower curtain and turns on the hot water tap. A rush of water strikes the basin, and steam slowly begins to rise from the bathtub.

"You can adjust the temperature to your preference," Hannibal says, "though I assume you'll want it hot. Allow me to fetch the first aid kit from my car; I'll only be gone a moment."

Once Hannibal leaves the room, Will divests himself of his shirt. Hannibal already unbuttoned it once in order to bandage his side, and Will hadn't bothered to do it up right; he finds now that he has missed six of the buttons. His pants, which are now missing a leg below the knee thanks to Hannibal's scissors, will have to be replaced. Will pays them no mind as he tosses them on top of his shoes. After taking off his socks, he contemplates whether or not to remove his boxers, eventually deciding that he won't mind getting them wet as long as they afford him some degree of modesty. By the time he has peeled off his bandages, the bathtub has filled by nearly four inches.

Letting out a sound close to a moan, Will lowers himself into the steaming water, sighing as his aching muscles relax in the presence of heat. His injured calf stings for an instant before being reduced once again to a dull aching.

The sound of the front door creaking alerts Will to Hannibal's return, and a few minutes later the doctor emerges with the first aid kit. He is dressed only in his shirtsleeves, which, considering the amount of clothes he usually wears, puts he and Will at roughly the same level of undress. Will's breath hitches in his throat as Hannibal sets the box down next to the sink, causing the fabric of his shirt to tug across his chest, and he quickly diverts his gaze.

Hannibal grabs a washcloth and goes to kneel by the side of the bath. He peers at Will's nearly submerged body. His expression changes for a fraction of a second when he notes that Will has not removed all of his clothing, and Will thinks he detects a hint of _disappointment _in the doctor's face_, _but his cheeks color at the mere thought. Hannibal dips the washcloth into the water, which is beginning to cover Will's torso.

"Lift your arm," he says gently, and Will obeys, allowing Hannibal to wipe delicately at the wound in his side. He winces, and Hannibal pauses before softly beginning again. He reaches to turn off the tap once the water threatens to spill over the side of the bathtub and then, inexplicably, kneels beside Will again.

Will lifts his gaze to study Hannibal's face. He's memorized the tender yet cruel outline of his lips, the dark shadows of his brow, yet he has never seen a hunger so deep in his maroon eyes. Will feels an oppressive heat somewhere at the core of his body, and he strongly doubts that it is due to the near-boiling water.

In the future both men will attempt to absolve themselves of responsibility by claiming that it was the other who made the first move, but the truth is, both are to blame.

While it is true that Hannibal reaches out and cups the side of Will's head, his long fingers tangling in the profiler's hair, it is Will who first leans forward and presses their lips together.

Will's eyes slide closed, and he sighs into the kiss. Hannibal's mouth is strong yet oddly soft against his, and the hand that knots in his hair grips him tight, providing a feeling of total safety. Will reaches out instinctively and presses his hand against Hannibal's chest, feeling taught muscle and a fluttering heartbeat that beats in perfect time. Will wonders why it never occurred to him that Hannibal should have a heartbeat.

The door to the bathroom creaks, and Hannibal breaks away, his eyes opening wide as if surprised by his own actions. Will glances at the door and sees that it is simply his dogs that have entered, curious to see what had become of their master. Will chuckles, but he falls abruptly silent when he sees Hannibal's slack expression.

"I'm sorry," Will says hurriedly, removing his hand from Hannibal's chest. A searing flush has risen to his cheeks. "I didn't mean to – "

Hannibal lunges forward, stealing Will's words and his breath as he captures his lips again. Will feels Hannibal's hands on him once more, one cradling the back of his head, the other pressing possessively against his shoulder.

"Will," Hannibal whispers as if the name is a prayer, and Will shudders. Suddenly the hand on his shoulder trails down his chest before delving between his thighs.

"Hannibal, wait," Will says, reaching to halt the hand, but without warning, he finds himself overpowered; the hand behind his head goes to his throat, and Hannibal shifts his weight so that Will is immobilized, all the while kissing him hungrily. "Hannibal, stop!" Will nearly shouts, ripping his lips away, but Hannibal ignores him. Fingers tighten on his throat, and a nimble hand slips beneath the elastic of his boxers

Frightened now, Will struggles to push the stronger man away, but when his eyes focus on Hannibal, he freezes.

He is no longer in his home in Wolf Trap, Virginia.

He is in the forest, where the moonlight doesn't shine quite right, and the trees cast ghastly shadows on the clearing. Will does not recline in a cast iron bathtub; instead he finds himself chest deep in a pool of blood, the same pool where once, in a dream, he saw a woman with skin like starlight vanish beneath the surface.

The creature hunched above him, trapping him, is not a man, but it is not a stag either. No, it has a man's face, but its skin is raven black and long antlers protrude from its skull. When the stag-man turns its head and meets Will's gaze, its eyes are a deep maroon.

Will hears a deep growl, and when he looks at the forest beyond, he sees the source.

Seven frothing hounds come slinking out of the darkness. Their eyes are crimson, their fangs bared; slaver drips from their mouths. Will, however, is unafraid. He knows somewhere deep within him that the hounds will not harm him, just as the stag knows that he is afforded no such safety. The stag rises, a shadow of a creature clothed in darkness and shirtsleeves, and the hounds fall upon it in a bloody fervor of barking and teeth.

Will watches in horror as the hounds tear at the stags arms and chest, clawing its cheeks and dragging it back towards the tree line. The writhing mass of predator and prey (Will is unsure which is which at this point) disappears into the forest, but Will can still hear the growling and gnashing of the hounds and the unbearable screaming of the stag.

He pulls himself out of the pool, though blood clings to him like paint, and attempts to chase after the hounds.

Back in the real world, Will Graham's leg shivers and collapses beneath him as he tries to stand, and he falls, striking his head on the side of the bathtub. Clothed in only a pair of boxers and soaking wet, he sinks to the floor as consciousness leaves him. As he sinks into sleep, he half-remembers a line from a story, one he doesn't quite know if it is real or not.

_"Diana's hounds, no longer recognizing their master's companion, as he had become a beast, fell upon him and tore him to pieces."_

* * *

Will does not depart easily from his fever dream. By the time he finally wakes, his mind is muddled with images of forests and gods, and he has the peculiar feeling that his brain is on fire. The growling outside the bathroom further aggravates the feeling. Thankfully, Will can hear no sounds from the stag, which means either that Hannibal is dead, or he has somehow evaded Will's dogs.

Will slowly drags himself to his feet and stumbles into the living room. He sees blood on the floor, but no sign of dogs of Hannibal. He continues on into the dining room, shivering somewhat. There the sight of a man lying prone on the table greets him, the feeble rise and fall of his chest the only sign that Hannibal is still alive.

Will's dogs circle the table warily, though Winston is the only one still on high alert, his teeth bared, the odd bark escaping him.

"Good boy," Will whispers.

The shape on the table, which is too bloody and mangled to be recognizable as a man, stills at the sound of Will's voice. Will backs away, out of the dining room, up the stairs. Before he deals with the disaster downstairs, he needs a change of clothes and a painkiller for the splitting ache in his head from the collision with the edge of the bathtub. At least the wounds in his side and leg have ceased to bleed.

A half hour later, Will feels that he is presentable, and he has had time to collect his thoughts. He has made a number of connections, many of them surprising, some of them less so. By the time he returns to the dining room, he finds the table vacant, though the smears of blood betray what was there before. He steps into the living room and sees Hannibal hunched in an armchair. The dogs stand guard but make no move to strike; they've done their duty, protected their master.

"Hello Hannibal," Will says, sitting down in a chair opposite the other man.

Hannibal makes no reply, only glares at Will under bloodstained brows.

"I've been thinking, Hannibal," Will continues. "There's a reason that I see you the way I do. You were lying before, weren't you? Killing Dinah Hicks didn't bother you because you've done worse. Isn't that right?"

"Depends what you mean by worse," Hannibal spits, blood flecking his lips.

"How does 'impaled on a stag's head and left to rot in a field' sound?" Will asks.

"Sounds much worse," Hannibal replies, still retaining his dark sense of humor even through the pain.

"That wasn't the work of a first-timer," Will says. "How many people have you killed?"

"A difficult question," Hannibal says simply.

"The real question," Will says, exhaling sharply, "is how we're going to explain this. You don't usually sustain those kind of injuries falling down the stairs."

"No, you don't."

"I can't tell the truth," Will muses. "They'd take away my dogs."

"Can't have that."

"I suppose…" Will says, thinking out loud, "There are wolves in this area. It's plausible. You get sent to urgent care with no one the wiser. I could go to your house, pass it off as getting a few things for a friend in the hospital, and while I'm there, accidentally stumble on something suspicious. A trophy, maybe?" Will scratches his chin. "A lock of hair, piece of jewelry. Something incriminating."

"Now you're thinking like a serial killer," Hannibal says through clenched teeth. One hand presses against his abdomen as if trying to keep something from falling out of it.

"You are the authority on these matters," Will responds, inclining his head respectfully. "I just have one question."

Hannibal cocks his head to one side.

"What did you do with Cassie Boyle's lungs?" Will asks. "Odd thing to take. Organs tend to shrivel up after a while. Do you keep them in formaldehyde? Freeze them? Or…"

Hannibal merely stares at Will, his face betraying nothing, as the profiler works it out for himself.

"What will I find in your fridge, Doctor Lecter?" Will asks, horrified. Hannibal doesn't answer. Then, "How many meals have we shared together?" Again, no reply. Neither question really needs an answer. Will knows the most crucial piece of information without having to voice it aloud.

_He's eating them._

* * *

(A year later)

"Hey, Tracy, how was your jog?"

Tracy grunts in reply and opens the fridge. She reaches blindly inside, unscrews the cap from the orange juice, and drinks deeply.

"Oh, man. I told you not to drink from the carton," Tracy's roommate, Catherine Martin, protests.

Tracy just shrugs and walks over to the kitchen table, where she stops dead in her tracks, her eyes fixed on the newspaper in Catherine's hands. Catherine glances at it then pushes it across the table.

"Yeah, the jury bought the insanity plea, but he's still going away for the rest of his life. He'll just be in a loony bin, not a prison."

Tracy sets the orange juice down on the table and sinks into a chair. The headline glares at her – _Lecter Spared Death Penalty; Committed to Chesapeake State Hospital. Lecter Spared Death Penalty. Lecter. Hannibal Lecter._

"I remember reading about him when he first got caught," Catherine says excitedly, a slight flush rising to her round cheeks. "Talk about gross. All that stuff they found in that room under his kitchen, not to mention what he was doing _in _the kitchen. I feel bad for anyone who came over for dinner. I mean, ugh!"

Tracy barely acknowledges her roommate's voice. There is a part of her she thought she had tamped down like a fire long ago, but the flame apparently still lives somewhere and can be revived by something as insignificant as a headline. She remembered clearly how an officer had opened the door of her interrogation room and told her that she was free to go. She remembers how minutes later a second officer informed her that her sister was dead, and that she was sorry for her loss. She remembers months of asking 'How?' and finally learning the circumstances, another month spent asking 'Who?', which no one was willing to tell her, but after he was incarcerated it didn't seem to matter anymore, and she was finally given a name.

Lecter. Hannibal Lecter.

By that point it didn't matter. Tracy thought she had buried that chapter of her life along with her sister, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

"Hey, Trace, are you all right? You're looking kinda clammy."

"What? Oh no, I'm fine." Tracy smiles feebly at her roommate. "The jog just took a lot out of me."

"Ugh, you reek. Go take a shower."

"Okay. We got any eggs?"

"It's your turn to go to the grocery store."

"Oh yeah. Sorry. I'll do that."

"After you take a shower."

"After I take a shower."


	12. Epilogue: A Visitor in Tartarus

(Two years later)

Frederick Chilton, finding that, once he began to write his premier book on the serial killer Hannibal Lecter, he had next to no talent for the written word, chose instead to rely heavily on the words of others. One particular quote on page two-hundred-and-fourteen generously paraphrases J. Robert Oppenheimer: "The optimist believes we live in the best possible of all worlds. The pessimist fears this is true.

Will Graham vows never to read anything published on Hannibal Lecter, especially any piece written by Chilton, so he will never run across the quote. Still, as he accompanies the smug doctor down several flights of stairs to the lowest floor in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, he considers all the possible timelines and worlds that were discarded to allow for this one moment.

This is not the best possible world. This Will Graham knows for sure. Back at home in Florida with Molly and Walter, where the veil is thick, Will can pretend, but he should have known that Jack Crawford would come calling sooner or later. Will clutches his case file and listens to Chilton drone on and on as the doors between them and Hannibal Lecter become fewer and fewer.

"Some of the staff are curious," Chilton says. "When you saw Dr. Lecter's murders, their 'style', were you able to reconstruct his fantasies? Did you identify with him?"

Will doesn't answer. He wouldn't have time to even if he chose; they've reached the maximum-security section of the hospital, and soon the steel door slides shut behind him, blocking of Chilton, blocking off the world.

Will notices that his hands are trembling, just as they did when he first laid eyes on the bedroom in the Leeds' home. He takes a deep breath to quell the tremors and begins to walk slowly down the hallway. He sticks close to the wall, refraining from looking into the cells he passes, though he can still hear noises. He blocks them out until he reaches the very last cell on the left.

Hannibal lies, seemingly asleep, on his cot through two inches of bulletproof glass. Will exhales shakily, forcing himself to focus on the other man.

"I can still remember the way you taste, Will," Hannibal says cordially after only a few seconds. Will swallows and looks uncomfortably away.

"Doctor Lecter, I - " He begins but is interrupted.

"Faintly metallic," Hannibal recalls, sitting up slowly, "like blood." His maroon eyes are like chips of glass, reflecting everything. Will sees himself in them.

"I need your help," Will says evenly.

"As you so often do," Hannibal sighs, rising from his cot. Despite the Spartan jumpsuit he wears, he still appears refined and capable. "You're looking well. I was disappointed to learn of your retirement, but to each his own, I suppose."

_To each his own. _Will remembers when the same words were spoken nearly three years ago. He remembers everything; the events of that one night are forever seared into his memory. He remembers how Hannibal tastes, too.

"You've put on weight," the doctor observes. "Not much, mind you, just enough to look healthy. Have you finally settled down? Have you found yourself someone willing to curl up with you at night?"

"I came about Chicago and Buffalo," Will says, pointedly ignoring the question.

"Ah…" Hannibal lifts his chin a fraction of an inch, lets his eyelids droop in understanding.

"I assume you've read about it."

"Of course. I can't take clippings; I'm not allowed scissors." Hannibal takes a step forward so that he and Will are mere inches apart. If it weren't for the glass, Hannibal could reach out and touch him. Will refrains from stepping away. Hannibal grins at his obvious discomfort. "You want to know how he's choosing them, don't you?"

"I thought you might have some ideas."

"I have many. For example, I don't believe our friend likes being called 'The Tooth Fairy'." Hannibal replies, stepping away from the glass.

"Interesting idea."

"Not idea, fact. Do you have the case file?"

"Yes."

"May I see it?"

Will crosses wordlessly to one side of the cell and opens the sliding drawer. Hannibal mirrors his movements, bringing them oppressively close once again. Will stuffs the case file into the drawer.

"River water," Hannibal says suddenly.

"Excuse me?"

"That's what you taste like, in addition to metal. Pine too, and chamomile tea."

Will slams the drawer closed, but Hannibal doesn't make any motion to retrieve the file. He meets Will's gaze as if daring the other man to tear his eyes away.

One, two, three…

"Why should I help you, Will?"

Will swallows, refusing to blink. He thinks of all the other timelines that have been passed over to make room for this one. How easy it would have been to live through any other series of events if it hadn't been for one deciding moment, one word, one kiss.

"Please," Will whispers, "Hannibal."

The doctor smiles, and without looking away, picks up the case file.

"That's more like it."

… Four, five, **_six._**


End file.
